It is not always that a Minister reveals so
frankly the motives that help to mould the policy of a great State.

[Footnote 278: Quoted by Vandal, _Napoleon I. et Alexandre,_ vol. i. p.
136.]

The predatory instinct, once acquired, does not readily pass away.
Alexander I. gratified it by forays in Circassia, even at the time when
he was face to face with the might of the great Napoleon; and after the
fall of the latter, Russia pushed on her confines in Georgia until they
touched those of Persia. Under Nicholas I. little territory was added
except the Kuban coast on the Black Sea, Erivan to the south of Georgia,
and part of the Kirghiz lands in Turkestan.

The reason for this quiescence was that almost up to the verge of the
Crimean War Nicholas hoped to come to an understanding with England
respecting an eventual partition of the Turkish Empire, Austria also
gaining a share of the spoils. With the aim of baiting these proposals,
he offered, during his visit to London in 1844, to refrain from any
movement against the Khanates of Central Asia, concerning which British
susceptibilities were becoming keen. His Chancellor, Count Nesselrode,
embodied these proposals in an important Memorandum, containing a
promise that Russia would leave the Khanates of Turkestan as a neutral
zone in order to keep the Russian and British possessions in Asia "from
dangerous contact[279]."

[Footnote 279: Quoted on p. 14 of _A Diplomatic Study on the Crimean
War,_ issued by the Russian Foreign Office, and attributed to Baron
Jomini (Russian edition, 1879; English edition, 1882).]

For reasons which we need not detail, British Ministers rejected these
overtures, and by degrees England entered upon the task of defending the
Sultan's dominions, largely on the assumption that they formed a
necessary bulwark of her Indian Empire. It is not our purpose to
criticise British policy at that time. We merely call attention to the
fact that there seemed to be a prospect of a friendly understanding with
Russia respecting Turkey, Asia Minor, Egypt, and Central Asia; and that
the British Government decided to maintain the integrity of Turkey by
attacking the Power which seemed about to impugn it. As a result, Turkey
secured a new lease of life by the Crimean War, while Alexander II.
deemed himself entirely free to press on Asiatic conquests from which
his father had refrained. Thus, the two great expanding Powers entered
anew on that course of rivalry in